Weichsel Glacial Stage, also called Vistula Glacial Stage, major division of late Pleistocene deposits and time in western Europe (the Pleistocene Epoch began about 2.6 million years ago and ended about 11,700 years ago). The Weichsel Glacial Stage followed the Eemian Interglacial Stage and marks the last major incursion of Pleistocene continental ice sheets. The Weichsel is correlated with the Würm Glacial Stage of Alpine Europe and is broadly equivalent to the Wisconsin Glacial Stage of North America. The Weichsel Glacial Stage has been divided into at least two main phases, separated by an interstadial period of more moderate climatic conditions.

The late Weichsel expansion of the Scandinavian continental ice sheet began about 25,000 years ago; most of the Weichselian sediments present over a wide area of northern Europe are part of this late Weichselian cold period. Earlier periods of glacial expansion are obliterated or hidden by the late Weichselian deposits and features. Interstadial deposits are known from parts of Sweden and Finland and are older than 40,000 years. The beginning of the Weichsel has been placed at about 70,000 years ago. The Weichselian record is perhaps best studied in the Netherlands–Denmark region of northern Europe. The employment of radiometric dating techniques and pollen analyses in this region has provided an excellent chronology of Weichselian events.

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...divided into contrasting eastern and western portions, the division marked approximately by the Elbe valley. The northern and eastern regions were molded by southward-moving ice sheets in the last (Weichsel, or Vistula) glaciation. The advancing ice sheets pushed up material that remains today as terminal moraines, stretching across the country in a generally southeast-to-northwest direction...

The basic contours of the Danish landscape were shaped at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (i.e., about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago) by the so-called Weichsel glaciation. This great glacial mass withdrew temporarily during several warmer interstadial periods, but it repeatedly returned to cover the land until it retreated to the Arctic north for the last time about 10,000...

...with oxygen-18 stages 8 and 6, respectively. Deposits and soils of the last interglaciation, the Eemian and Ipswichian, are correlative with oxygen-18 stage 5e, and those of the last glaciation, the Weichselian and Devensian, correlate with oxygen-18 stages 5d–a, 4, 3, and 2. As in central North America, tills and other deposits are well known only from the last part of this interval. The...